1. Technical Field of the Present Invention
The present invention generally relates to the presentation of hierarchical information, and more specifically to the organization of the hierarchical information prior to the presentation.
2. Description of Related Art
Consumers receive hierarchical information from numerous sources such as Automated Voice Response Systems (AVRS) and search engine query results. In general, AVRS are used by industries (e.g., travel, finance, health care, and the like) to direct customer inquiries to the appropriate areas of expertise while reducing the headcount for the overall infrastructure of customer support.
The number of companies with sophisticated business operations (e.g., communications, computer support and the like) that are increasingly relying on AVRS to improve productivity at call centers is skyrocketing. It has become crucial for them to develop an efficient AVRS that routes calls according to their business objectives while maintaining customer satisfaction.
Customer's satisfaction with an AVRS is directly related to the amount of time they spend on the system prior to receiving the appropriate automated activity or individual. The total amount of wait time can often be attributed to the complexity and efficiency of the AVRS design.
Currently, the design effort for much of the AVRS is done manually and fails to assign weights to routing areas. In addition, these AVRS lack the ability to dynamically adjust their routing areas according to the demand (e.g. most systems just introduce a quick message at the beginning of reaching the AVRS and leave the routing system unmodified (e.g. mail server 1023 is currently unavailable). These current design methodologies are error prone and inconsistent in their implementations.
It would, therefore, be a distinct advantage if the presentation of hierarchical information to the consumer would be organized according to the priorities of the business while maintaining efficiency of design so as to minimize the time required by the consumer to achieve his intended result. It would be further advantageous if the organization of the information could be dynamically modified according to demand.